


Things She Didn't Say

by chiarascura



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 16:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19407127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiarascura/pseuds/chiarascura
Summary: “Tell me something, Brienne,” Jaime says. “Something no one else knows.”She chokes on her wine. They’ve shared a bed for a week, and it seems a reasonable enough request for lovers. Brienne isn’t entirely sure, since this is all new for her. Sharing her body is one thing, sharing the deepest parts of herself feels different.Her thoughts race and blank out simultaneously. “I don’t know…” she says. “Like what?”





	Things She Didn't Say

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this weeks ago but never really finished it. I'd like to write a better ending for it, but I haven't figured it out yet.
> 
> heads up, unhappy canon ending. even if i absolutely hated canon, it kind of happened here anyway.

“Tell me something, Brienne,” Jaime says. “Something no one else knows.”

She chokes on her wine. They’ve shared a bed for a week, and it seems a reasonable enough request for lovers. Brienne isn’t entirely sure, since this is all new for her. Sharing her body is one thing, sharing the deepest parts of herself feels different. 

Her thoughts race and blank out simultaneously. “I don’t know…” she says. “Like what?” 

\----

Love makes her uncomfortable. Does that count as a secret? She has never been demonstrative with her affection, especially not since leaving Tarth. She understands loyalty, gave that freely to Lady Catelyn and Lady Sansa, but love? It is too easy to be manipulated, to become a weakness, and she has shied away from it.

He is so easy with his love. Not in public, that's never been a possibility before now. But she will catch him watching her as they eat in the great hall, or observing her training the young ones in the yard with that soft look in his eyes, and she knows. In private, it’s even more intense. He will sit at the end of their bed and rub her feet at the end of a long day.

She doesn’t know if this is love. It is commitment and trust and affection, and that is enough. She has no expectations of more, does not know if she is capable of more. 

And yet…

She is so blissfully, incandescently happy. 

Whenever he enters a room, he seeks her out. Her own habit has her looking for exits, places to hide or fight. His instinct is… her.

So why isn't it enough? Why does she feel like she's doing something wrong, she's not enough? 

When he looks at her with those eyes, she's filled with love but also she wants to run away, not let him see her many imperfections, her shame and embarrassment, her failings as a woman. 

She resolves to make an effort. One night at dinner, someone brings out a lyre and plays a sweet melody, a contrast to the still somber mood.

The man's voice is decent, no great vocalist but the effort is enough. Brienne feigns indifference and focus on her dinner, but her attention stays with him. 

He plucks the strings of his lyre and she recognizes the opening of Alysanne. Her heart beats faster, the memory of this love song infecting her blood. 

Something about the tune, sad and slow, always touched the deepest part of her. She hums along, thinks about the lyrics following Alysanne and her knight. In ages past, Alysanne married for politics, yet her true love was a knight who committed himself to the chivalric ideals of truth, justice, and protecting the innocent. They were never truly together, but the courtly love between them was deep and profound. 

Brienne is transported back to hearing the song at Evenfall Hall, begging the bard to play it over and over. Wrapped up in the romance and magic of true love, she had dreamed and wished and wondered. 

As the last chords fade, the applause is lackluster. Brienne sighs deeply, and recalls how much she loved the song as a girl. The bard launches into a rendition of the Bear and the Maiden Fair, and the moment is gone. 

She and Jaime retire to her room, and as she undresses, she tries. "I liked the singer tonight."

Jaime makes a thoughtful noise as he undresses himself. "Decent voice, though not particularly creative."

"I like listening to bards. Many came though Evenfall, and the stories… they were nice." That was an understatement, but she didn't know how to express how much the stories moved her, how she got lost imagining herself as the hero saving the realm, fighting evil, being loved rather than despised. 

Jaime stills and turns his head to her. "Is that so?" He pauses, undershirt loose on his shoulders and left hand rests on the chair. "Which was your favorite?"

Brienne thinks for a moment, the chords of Alysanne ringing in her ears. There is another song she loves, one she imagines Jaime will like as well. "Sir Galladon of Morne," she says, a small smile curling the corners of her mouth. "He isn't well known outside of the Stormlands, but he's a legend in Tarth." She hums a few bars of the melody to his best known tale, before she catches herself and stops abruptly. She turns away, red heat creeping up her neck. 

Jaime speaks slowly. "I can't say I've ever heard of him. Would you tell me?" He sits in the chair before the hearth, tentative and slow. 

She takes a deep breath and joins him, sitting close enough that their knees touch. The story of Galladon is a comfortable one, widely accepted and venerated. She speaks the lines to the song, knows them by heart, the tale of how Ser Galladon’s goodness drew the Maiden’s eye and her heart. 

She finishes her recitation and the room is silent. The fire crackles in the hearth, and Brienne feels the familiar anxiety before rejection rise in her breast. 

"He sounds quite dashing," he says, and the squeeze around her heart loosens. "Are there other tales of him? His legend hasn't quite made it to the Westerlands." 

That easy acceptance is an exquisite pain. It makes it a little easier to share small things. Alysanne still rings in her ears, but it’s a start. 

\------

The fire crackles in the hearth, and Jaime pours more Dornish wine into both of their cups. "I traveled to Dorne, with Myrcella." A reminder, a memory of grief. 

“She knew, at the end, that she was mine. Well, no. She was Cersei’s, always. But I played a part in it.” There is a false lightness in his words, a levity that means to mask the grief. Others may not hear it, but Brienne does. 

“What was she like?” she asks, and her voice doesn’t break.

Jaime stares into his cup. “She was soft. A perfect princess. She was so excited to go to Dorne to meet her Dornish prince.” He tells of the few times he was on duty to protect her, the few opportunities to know her as a person rather than know of her. 

“Cersei…” He stops. He raises his cup to his mouth and drinks deeply. He does not finish his statement, but leaves her name hanging in the air. 

Brienne shifts in her chair. She wants to share the loss of her brother, the grief of watching him die, but the words lodge behind her teeth. _Something no one else knows._

"I wanted to be a princess." 

Jaime's eyebrows shoot upwards, and it pulls him from wherever his mind had gone to. She can feel his eyes on the side of her face, and keeps her own eyes carefully on her cup.

“I wanted to be a knight, yes. But I also wanted to be a princess.” Brienne has fuzzy memories of her mother dressing her up in silk dresses. She would walk up and down the halls of Tarth wearing the blue and rose of her house and her mother would praise her for how beautiful and graceful she was. She couldn’t have been much out of her leading strings, but it was a cherished memory. After her mother’s death, Brienne grew and it became obvious she would never be those things. 

Alysanne comes to her mind. Brienne’s betrothals were all politically motivated and she had plenty of time to think on what her future would be like as a lord’s wife. It wasn’t long before she realized she wanted to be the knight more than the lady in the castle. 

“I learned early on that wasn't going to happen. I was ungainly and ugly. I still am those things. I rejected the dresses and the sewing because they never felt right, but I wanted them, for a moment.

“I learned to fight and what it meant to be a knight, what it meant to be good. I wanted those things more. Even if they were less acceptable.” 

She twists the cup between her hands, an uncharacteristic fidgeting gesture. “I wanted to be normal.” 

Jaime snorts. “Normal.” Condescension drips from the word like acid in his mouth. She looks up at him, startled, and he backtracks. “No, not you, I just-- Normal is such a funny thing to aspire to. It’s always something we can’t attain, isn’t it? It makes us smaller, its meant to fit us in little boxes that make others comfortable, and not us.”

She understands what he means, and softens. “Yes, I suppose so.” Normal was meant to make others see the good in her. If she had been smaller, more delicate, more womanly, she would have been accepted. 

He stands from his own seat and kneels before her. His hands are warm as they clasp hers, and when she looks up from where they are joined, Jaime’s eyes are blue and clear. “We can’t be normal and I don’t want us to be. I… I’m happy to be with you just as you are.”

Heat blooms in her chest and her lips curve upwards. She squeezes his hands in return.

\--- 

Her life comes out in small bits. One day as she is training Northmen in the yard, Jaime stands beside her. He watches, never speaking over her or showing off his own prowess, but backs her up. When the practice is done, they walk together to their next destination. 

Jaime starts the conversation, as always. "Ah, to be young and green again. The way young Manderly kept rushing and tripping over his feet. I did the same."

Her head is flooded with memories of her own training, and she pries the words out of herself. It feels like pulling teeth. "I was never so hasty. Slow and steady. I learned to let them come to me, and wear them out."

Jaime smiles, and Brienne’s heart skips a beat. "Ah, now I understand your tactics when we fought."

Brienne snorts. "The first time we fought, you were too arrogant and had your hands tied. Hardly a challenge."

Jaime laughs, and his eyes glitter. "You’re right, but even then I thought you might be stronger than me. Who else have you taken down like that?" 

She pauses, and a few faces appear in her mind’s eye. She can see Ser Humfrey Wagstaff and his arrogance, his belief that she would immediately fold under him and be a model wife. "My third betrothed expected me to serve and obey. I knew that wouldn’t happen, and said I would only be a 'proper wife' for someone who could beat me in combat. I broke two ribs, his collarbone, and the betrothal."

There is a light in Jaime's eyes, an amusement that borders on laughter, but there is also pride and affection and… something else. "It sounds like he got what he deserved. How quickly did he go down?”

The ball of anxiety in her chest eases. “Under ten minutes.”

Jaime tsks. “A shame he finished that quickly. Ran out of stamina? Blew his load too early?”

Despite herself, Brienne laughs. They pause outside the doorway to her office and she pulls him in to kiss him. He responds immediately, leaning up into her space. 

When she pulls away, he smiles. “That one got you, huh? Well, if we take this back to your room I can show you how a real knight makes it last.”

She rolls her eyes and squeezes his shoulder. She turns to walk into her office, heart lighter.

\-----

“Tell me about dancing with Renly Baratheon,” he asks one late night in her room. 

She narrows her eyes. “I thought you already knew about that,” she says. 

Jaime laughs, wide and free. “Podrick told me. He's a terrible cheat at the game.”

Brienne presses her lips together, in vindication of her suspicions but also to keep a smile from breaking over her own face. Her squire had broken her confidence, but somehow in this moment she isn't mad. 

She sighs longsufferingly, as if sharing her story is a burden. The thought registers, and her smile truly drops, her gaze is pinned to the table. She runs her finger over the whorls and grain of the wood. “Renly came to Tarth when I was a girl. He was the only one to dance with me.”

There was more to it, so much more, but the words are stuck in her throat. The shame and embarrassment over her constant mockery, the elation of being given the smallest piece of humanity. It's all too much, and she can't speak. “That's all,” she says. 

His eyes are hot on her face, and she knows he is staring when she says nothing more. He nods. “Sounds charming,” he says. She hears disappointment in his voice, a lack of trust. “Was he a good dancer?”

“Yes, he was. Even with my clumsiness, he led us around the hall quite easily.” She would never call herself graceful, except maybe with a sword. Not even then, but she had come closer.

Jaime stands, abrupt after their quiet talking. “Dance with me.”

She looks around her small room. There’s barely enough space for a small table and her bed. “Dance with you?” she repeats.

He holds his left hand out to her and executes a half-bow. “My lady of Tarth, please do me the honor.” When she doesn’t respond, he drops to one knee before her and looks into her eyes. “No one is here to watch, no one will judge you. I can lead. Please.”

Trust me, she hears. It feels like a vast chasm is opening up and she only has a moment to choose: stay here on this side where it is comfortable and safe, or take Jaime’s hand and… 

She stands, slow and unsure. Jaime follows eagerly and moves to the side where there is less furniture.

He takes her in his arms, and they start to dance. 

They can only really move about two steps one way, turn and then two steps back, but it’s enough. She is still not graceful, but she is closer. They sway together for long moments, and she is lulled into comfort and safety.

“You mentioned your third betrothed, before.” She stiffens, but his arm slides up her back to draw her closer. “Please, if you don’t want to talk then we won’t. I can tell you about my own betrothals. But I… I want to know about you.” 

She hesitates. They keep moving in small movements across the room and back, and she is softened. “The first was when I was a child. He and his family died from a chill.” The boy had been kind enough, but she could barely remember his face.

She thinks on her second betrothal and the words are harder. “Next was…” The words are a physical obstruction in her throat, and she can’t speak. She steps away, breaking the dance. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t.”

Jaime drops his arms and there is no recrimination, no anger or blame. “I understand. Shall I tell you of my betrothed?” He reaches out to pull her back into his arms and continue the dance. “Lysa Tully, your Lady’s sister.” 

Brienne accepts the apology behind his words, the open hand that isn’t shaming her for her secrets. She steps back into his space, and he pulls them into the slow rocking motions once again. 

\----

They are lying together in bed in the afterglow. Jaime has his head resting on her chest and traces lazy circles with his fingers along her skin. The delicate touch is feather light and it would tickle were she not paying such close attention. Brienne’s eyes are half closed, her own fingers running through Jaime’s hair. 

Jaime's fingers trace across the scars on her collar bone, the gentle ghost of the violence that created them. "I remember this," he says, voice no louder than a whisper. 

She swallows against the memory of the bear pit. She held a dull tourney sword and desperately fought to survive. She hadn’t given up, but wasn't far from it either. One more swipe like the one that left these scars would have taken her down for good. Jaime had jumped in, ignoring the possibility he would die, convinced in his invincibility. He had saved her. 

"Yes," she says. 

“What’s this one?” Jaime’s voice is soft enough not to startle her, but it surprises her. His finger runs along one of her scars, the one across her chest. 

“That one is from the Hound, when we fought.” 

Jaime nods, his finger still delicately tracing the knotted skin. “Tell me about it.”

Brienne does. It’s not heroic, it’s full of fear. Arya Stark had been right there and slipped through her grasp as she fought with the Hound. He fought dirty, and she had matched him. When she is finished, Jaime’s fingers dance along her skin to another one.

“And this?”

Her words are more stilted as she explains the next one. When he traces a third scar, she grasps his hand in one of her own. “What are you doing, Jaime?” Her words are barely a whisper. 

He tilts his head up to meet her eyes. “I want to know you. I want to know things like who you’ve fought and how you’ve hurt. I want to know what makes you smile and how to make you come. If you don’t want to answer, that’s alright. I won’t make you.” His gaze is open and sincere. 

“But why?” Little by little, brick by brick, Jaime has spent his days dismantling the defenses she built up over her whole life. She doesn’t know why, or doesn’t let herself know why. 

His eyebrows come together in a mask of confusion. “Why? I… I came to Winterfell for you. I stayed here for you.” His eyes gleam in the darkness, the low light of the fire in the hearth not enough to illuminate the room but just enough for her to see his face. "What will it take for you to believe me?" A slight edge of exasperation, of impatience, colors his voice. 

Brienne exhales, ragged and wet. Emotion rises in her chest. "I don't.. that's not…" 

He shakes his head gently. "That was unfair of me. Please don't answer. I have to earn your trust, and I've done a shit job until now."

She slides out from under him and lays on her side so they are face to face. 

"Jaime, You've tried. I’ve seen you change. " 

_I love you._ The words are right there in her mouth, ready to be spoken, ready for him. She opens her mouth-- 

"I know this one," he says, finger running along her thigh. Where he had nicked her during their first fight, before he lost his hand. 

The moment is lost. He leans in to press a kiss to her collarbone and eases his way down her body, kissing each scar along the way. 

\---

_It's for the best,_ she tells herself. _You kept the most precious parts of yourself hidden, and he was going to leave anyway._

The words are not reassuring. She feels no better. She is torn open, a wound ragged and bloody. 

Jaime's departure is validation, reinforcement that sharing herself isn't worth the pain.

And yet, she didn't share everything, did she? Would that have changed anything? If she told him of her love for Renly and her embarrassment at the hands of Hyle Hunt and the outright rejection of Ronnet Connington? Her love for Jaime that had grown and grown, until it encompassed her whole self? Would it have made a difference, would he have seen her differently?

What if, what if, what if. Brienne slams her sword into the training dummy, the force sending the straw man to the other side of the yard. It is evening and few are around to see, and she is glad of it. She does not want to explain herself.

Tears roll down her face. She loves him, she has loved him for too long. If she had told him…

No more what ifs. Brienne steels herself. She will move on, she will move past him. She is a knight of the seven kingdoms, and the best knights keep going despite misfortune in love. 

Maybe she had it wrong. Maybe Jaime was Alysanne, the one who would always return to her commitment, and Brienne was the knight who would keep the torch of their forbidden love lit. 

It was a mistake, all of it. Brienne cloaked herself in silence and rebuilt her walls, brick by brick. It would take time, but she had the rest of her life for it.


End file.
